Group items tagged

Consumer groups urge action on the cable industry's TV Everywhere, which the groups claim will limit online television development and access to protect traditional cable business models.

Broadcasting and Cable conducts a sit down interview with Steven Waldman, senior advisor to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, to discuss the Governments role in balancing old and new media. Subsidies and media industry economics are also discussed.

"To stop broadcasters from flexing their muscles, the coalition asked the FCC to mandate that disputes be settled by an arbitrator. They also want regulators to bar stations from withholding their programming, their most potent bargaining chip."

Hulu is free Internet TV in a sea of subscription. The portal is said to be making very little once all money is divided up among its partners.

Update on the court case between Arbitron radio ratings and Spanish Broadcasting Systems over SBS's refusal to encode their signals so that Arbitron can measure audience. SBS claims that Arbitron's measurment under counts Hispanic listeners and hurts their advertising rates.

NBC's current online coverage of the Olympics is discussed in light of the online technology and the use of "cable verification" to establish new online models limiting free content.

Consumer watchdog groups complained to the FCC about cable conglomerates using "hostage taking" as a negotiating tactic. The groups referenced the subscription rate battles that threatened to keep consumers from watching the Super Bowl and the Oscars in a recent letter to the FCC.

Facebook, Twitter, and the iPhone are TV's only hope, according to Elisabeth Murdoch, CEO of Shine Limited, a British television production and distribution company. According to Broadcasting & Cable, Ms. Murdoch told TV producers and distributors at the annual National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) convention: "We in the TV business have to catch up with \nwhat our audience is doing. We can no longer afford to be one-screen business."

"The trial, which should begin by this spring, will transmit up to 20 channels of free and premium programming using signals from eight mobile DTV stations: WDCA (Fox Television Stations); WUSA (Gannett Broadcasting); WPXW (ION Media Networks); WRC (NBC Universal); WHUT (Howard University/PBS); WNVC (MHz Networks); WNUV (Sinclair Broadcast Group); and WFDC (Univision Communications). "One of the key advantages of mobile DTV is the built-in ability to measure viewer activity, giving broadcasters a much better picture of what consumers are actually watching, when they watch, and where," said Brandon Burgess, OMVC President and ION Media Networks Chairman and CEO."

Op Ed Exploring the rates and speeds available in other countries, and the fact that the United States has among the slowest speeds and the highest prices of advanced economies. Also discusses the proposed FCC National Broadband Plan.

NBC owns the U.S. rights to the Vancouver Olympics, and, for this Olympics, it has clamped down on online live streaming of events. Only hockey and curling will be shown live online, with all other events either shown live on television or held for tape-delay airing on prime time or late night television, says the industry publication Broadcasting & Cable in a story Monday. The Web site for CTV, the Canadian network with rights to the Olympics in that country, is live-streaming events, but NBC has made sure that computers with U.S. IP addresses can't log onto the CTV site.

Ultility regulators weigh in on FCC proposed regulation, stressing non-discrimination on peer-to-peer and political content by broadband providers.

ABC News will make significant job cuts as part of a reorganization, the latest signal that broadcast networks must re-evaluate themselves in competition with cable and others.

Many broadcast networks are pushing cable TV providers to pay for transmission fees for NFL games.

NAB President, Gordon Smith, adds praise to agreements between Fox/TWC as well as Fisher and Bright House

If they Comcast-NBC merger goes through, the conglomerate could gain serious clout in negotiations between local station owners and local cable systems for the right to retransmit broadcast tv signals.

Should the FCC change rules that prevent consumers from losing channels during fee disputes between broadcasters and cable operators?

Good description of the relationship between affiliates and the moves that have occurred in Late Night programming.

The FCC is launching an inquiry into the future of media and its role in providing news and civic information. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said that rapid technological change has caused financial turmoil that calls into question whether traditional media will continue to be the go-to provider of essential news and information. The commission issued a public notice teeing up some of the questions it wants answered and launched a web site to collect some of that input

Article describing an ongoing battle between the Walt Disney Company and Cablevision over the distribution payments Disney wants for ABC from Cablevision